The job of a quality analyst is not easy but is quite interesting and very important in the software development life cycle. In the current age of digital transformation, the amount of mobile traffic is increasing daily and organizations moving more towards creating mobile applications, a QA plays a very important role in bug-free deployment process.

Let’s discuss a few of the manual testing methods required to make sure deployment is defect-free of a mobile application under test.

If you are planning to start your career as a QA, these points will help you to get through any organization

Select Device Type

An important job before starting the testing phase is to figure out the number of devices on which testing is to be performed.

In the case of iOS, the range of devices is restricted and expensive. But, in the case of Android, there is no restriction on the platform or device on which it can be installed.

As a result, many android devices are there, each with their customized UI and screen resolutions. It will be better to:

• Research the market using analytic tools and figure out the devices that are used mostly by end-users for the type of application has been developed.
• If the budget estimation of the project is sufficient, get a couple of Android and iOS devices for carrying out testing
• Functionality testing being covered in real mobile devices, for UI testing, the browser’s default emulator or mobile device emulator plug-ins will be sufficient.

What to Choose? Device or Emulator

After doing market research and figuring out the devices on which testing should be performed, you have to take the next big decision. Whether to test on emulators or real devices for bug-free deployment. Let’s discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both.

Real devices are:

• Reliable
• Testing can be performed on the same devices and the same operating system that will be used by an end-user.
• Application performance under interruptions like voice call or text can even be checked.

However, there are a few disadvantages:

• Purchase and maintenance cost.
• Availability of devices that are used only in certain countries.

Emulators on the other hand are

• Easily available, most of them are open source and free
• Expected behaviors can be easily found
• While debugging any issue, they can be connected with IDE
• Both software and hardware functionalities can be replicated

But they have some limitations as well

• Real-time eventualities like device heating or battery consumption can not be tested
• Slower than the actual device
• All OS versions are not supported

Role of Cloud Testing Bug-Free Deployment

For special testing requirements, the in house solutions are the best. However, within the recent age of digital transformation, the Cloud provides multiple alternatives for testing. The cloud computing phenomenon, allows access to large device clouds featuring hundreds or even thousands of real devices, along with emulators and simulators

• The problem with getting different devices and maintenance cost is saved by testing application on a cloud platform.
• The device pool can be accessed from multiple locations.
• The biggest advantage is continuity. Every time the developer modifies and adds a code, it can be redeployed and test case scenarios can be executed.
• The quality of the application is ensured by increasing test coverage.
• Supports parallel test case execution by running the same scenarios in multiple devices at the same time

Connectivity Testing

Before deploying the application in production, it is important to test how the application performs at a place with the poor network coverage. However, it is difficult and time-consuming to test the application on real devices under different network connections since connectivity may vary according to place and network operators.

User Experience and Browser(Native Apps) Compatibility

Its sole responsibility to test the UX of the app manually and on an actual device. This is the most crucial part of testing as UX is the product’s core. Following are a few checklists which a tester keep in mind while testing the app:

• The response of the application components like buttons, dropdowns, etc. on touch
• User interaction specific behaviors like animations, page changes and their response time
• The responsive behavior of the viewport in several devices, each with different resolutions
• If the application is a web-based, its behavior and performance of critical functionalities should be tested in the browsers with major usage share in Android or iOS devices.

Performance and Security Testing For Bug-Free Deployment

Mobile devices have limited storage space. Applications typically become slow or unresponsive once the space for storing of mobile becomes nearly full. The application should be tested manually to test how it performs in a device having very little space for storing.

Also, if it generates files like images or reports, testing should be done considering how it works with increasing user count.

If the app is dealing with sensitive data like banking or online transaction-related information, out-of-the-box security testing ideas are required. Especially, it should be ensured that the app does not store information on the device. An easy way to test it is by:

• Opening the application and logging in.
• Close or click back in the browser.
• Opening it again and check whether the user is still logged in.
• Buffer overflows and memory corruption cases
• data storage and data validation requirements
• Verify the transaction entries in the database if the tester has access to the Application database

Brownie Point: Find the Crashes and report them with exact steps

Manual testing of a mobile application is quite a challenging job and sometimes, requires the tester to think of an idea that has not been implemented before. Mobile users are usually unforgiving and if they see an application performing not as expected, they will uninstall it without thinking twice. Thus, having a strong manual testing strategy for bug-free deployment is the key to application and product’s success. 

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